Pulse

screen was the one thing in her life that was as smooth as Noah’s skin, she couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. Liz swung around and faced the empty Old Navy store, then threw the Tablet like it were a tomahawk. It hit the cement wall and fell to the pavement below, scratched but unbroken.
    “You have to hit them really hard or they won’t break,” Dylan said.
    “Believe me, I don’t need any help in that department.”
    Liz, who had damaged her Tablet plenty of times over the years, was not about to let a virtual stranger tell her how to do this. She walked to the Tablet, picked it up, and began banging it against the wall. It didn’t take long to bloody her knuckles on the white, painted surface of the Old Navy store, a little longer to hear the screen of her Tablet crack. She dropped the Tablet on the sidewalk and started stomping on it.
    “I think it’s dead now,” Dylan said, cautiously taking a step closer to her. She didn’t appear to hear him as she continued stomping on the Tablet over and over. It wasn’t until he touched her on the shoulder and she tried to bat his hand away that she finally gave up.
    “Why are you here?!” she yelled. “Just leave me alone.”
    Dylan backed off, watching Liz like he’d stumbled upon a stray dog that might react in any number of ways.
    “It’s cool. I was walking through on my way to somewhere else, thought you looked a little lost, that’s all.”
    “Bullshit.”
    Dylan Gilmore stopped backpedaling as Liz went on. “What’s your deal anyway? You walk around looking all silent and smoldering, don’t talk to anyone. And then you just turn up for no reason right when my parents decide to leave? It’s creepy.”
    “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
    Liz waited about two seconds to see if Dylan was going to say anything else; and when he didn’t, she decided he wasn’t worth her time.
    “I gotta go,” she said. “Nice knowing you.”
    “No good-bye for Faith or Hawk?”
    Liz was ready to snap. It felt like she was being accused of ditching her friends by someone who had no right getting into her business.
    “You don’t know me. Or them! You don’t know anything . Just stay out of it.”
    Dylan ran a hand through his black hair and stared at his skate shoes, two habits that seemed to help him make up his mind about things when he wasn’t sure what to do. When he looked up and saw that Liz had already begun walking away, he thought it might be too late.
    “If you want me to give them a message, I’ll do that for you. I don’t mind.”
    Liz stopped in her tracks but didn’t turn around. Was she so heartless that she’d leave without saying a word, like so many of her friends had done? Hawk was new; it was expected that he wouldn’t necessarily hear from her. But Faith, that was something else. They’d been through so much together.
    “I’ve had to do this, too,” Dylan said. “More than once. I know how hard it is to come up with the right words to say.”
    The offer was tempting, but she barely knew Dylan Gilmore. She’d been at Old Park Hill for only a few weeks, and he’d said maybe two words in all that time. It didn’t feel right sending a message through someone she didn’t trust. What if he got it all wrong? And besides, it was too personal. She’d want to say she loved them, would miss them terribly, wished she could stay. She wasn’t about to say those things to a guy she didn’t know.
    “If you see them, tell them I’ll be waiting on the other side, and I hope they don’t forget me. Tell them I’m sorry. I didn’t get to choose this.”
    Dylan didn’t speak for a long moment. He wanted to give her space in case there was more.
    “That it?”
    “Yeah, that’s it. Now do me a favor and leave me alone.”
    Liz started walking away without a second glance. She wished Dylan would leave, but she could feel him still staring at her even before he spoke.
    “When you get to the State, be on the lookout for a message; will you at least do that much for me?”
    “I don’t even know you, so no, I won’t.”
    “The message won’t be from me. It’ll be from someone else.”
    Whatever game Dylan was playing had finally sent Liz over the edge. She turned around to let him have it. She was already halfway into the first blistering sentence before she realized that Dylan Gilmore was gone. It was like he’d never been there to begin with.
    “And don’t come back!” Liz yelled. She began to sob and kicked her